


this house we keep

by eversall



Series: pack is an alive thing [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fluff and Angst, M/M, because these pack members are my FAVORITE, but i just kind of chose the pack structure I liked best, everybody besides stiles and derek are just mentioned tho, no specific time frame, total fluff at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 19:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4404302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eversall/pseuds/eversall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He and Derek begin figuring out how to build up the Hale mansion properly again. Mostly Derek putters around excitedly, directing construction crews and Stile tries to sit still long enough to draw up blueprints.<br/>.<br/>A road trip, a house, and, ultimately, a happy Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this house we keep

**Author's Note:**

> Wow okay I love all the characters in Teen Wolf and I love the whole idea but this show gets so dark and complicated?? Don't even get me started on Season 5. Because I've read more fanfiction than I've watched episodes of Teen Wolf, I just started writing after watching some of Season 5 because in my head, a lot of this complicated stuff doesn't happen, people live, and everyone is happy.

It’s like – it’s like this, okay, Stiles hands begin to shake when he drives. They’re small, uncontrollable tremors and he stares at them, mesmerized. He can feel the vibrations through his fingers, and he spaces out for a while. If he were driving through Beacon Hills, it would have been dangerous as fuck, but he’s in the woods, and well, that’s okay. He’s spent enough time nearly getting killed out here to not really care if his inevitable end is a car accident. He doesn’t have much pride left.

And then, well, the tremors don’t go away and it drives him fucking insane, okay, and he finds himself pushing his hands together, aligning his fingers, just feeling the way they thrum. It’s the most enthralling thing.

It’s like his own goddamn beat. He walks to the sound of that jittery vibration. Who needs a heartbeat?

He tries to tell Scott, but Scott is like, very wrapped up in the world of Isaac and Allison and being the Alpha and Stiles kind of stares at the hungry look in Isaac’s eyes and thinks finally _yeah, this is it, time to hit the road_.

.

He enlists in Berkeley. He sends his SIR, he signs up for orientation, he ditches prom in favor of practicing his shooting technique at the range, and goes to graduation. His dad knows, and Lydia knows, mostly because Stiles is afraid of taking off without telling her. His Jeep is all packed and ready for a road trip, all his stuff already in the trunk.

But he’s waiting; he knows there’s a time to leave and he has to find it.

After graduation, he takes a few pictures, ruffles Scott’s hair and Isaac’s hair, gives Danny and Erica and Boyd a long hug, then wanders off through the woods.

Derek finds him, and he’s surprised. He’s bitter but achingly sweet underneath it all, and hurting so bad Stiles feels like he’s cracking right along with him.

He asks to come along. Stiles doesn’t ask back how Derek knew he was leaving, just tells him they’re leaving tonight.

.

Stiles drives them up through Oregon like a madman is on their trail. He thinks if he doesn’t go fast enough he might chicken out. Derek switches out with him, drives at a more reasonable speed, and is even brave enough to check the rearview mirror. Stiles falls asleep for a little bit.

When he wakes up, he looks steadily out the window. His hands are trembling again and he swears he sees a wolf running alongside the dark highway.

.

They break at an Econo Lodge, where he and Derek curl up together on a queen size mattress. Stiles sings to Derek until the older man noses along the hollow of Stiles’ throat and falls asleep.

Derek wakes up in the middle of the night, poised to fight for just a whisper of a second before the tension melts out of him. Stiles still isn’t asleep; he’s running points from a science journal article about lions, pride behavior, and female availability through his head when he feels the tremors again.

Derek slots his hand against Stiles’, and he can feel it traveling up the skin of his fingertips too.

 _I think I’m going crazy_ he whispers to Stiles, half-smiling, and Stiles bops Derek’s nose gently.

.

They travel up to Washington the next day, up to Olympic National Park, which is as far as his plans for the trip stand. Derek loves it, loves the grandeur of the mountains and the icy chill coming in from everywhere.

 _I can feel my smile again_ he says softly in delight as snow starts coming down, and Stiles stomps around obnoxiously in his new snow boots and laughs and laughs as his cheeks begin to hurt from the cold.

It’s a feeling, and maybe it’s a start. Something has to hurt before it can heal, right? You need fresh air and time for a wound. Stiles begins to believe in it.

.

That night, Scott and Erica begin calling and texting. Stiles turns off his phone and gives it to Derek, and he stuffs it under the gun Stiles brought along, along with his own phone.

 _I just wanted to have something happy_ he says softly, sweetly, looking at his hands, and Stiles drags him close and puts his trembling fingers in Derek’s hair and kisses his forehead again and again.

He promises Derek, _you will have it_ , and it feels like what it felt like to have Scott before. Someone to protect against the whole world.

.

They finally return to Beacon Hills and Scott is furious that they left without telling and that they won’t use the pack to combat the waves of loneliness and misery rolling off the two of them, but Stiles holds up a hand and just shakes his head because no, this shit is too much for him too. He doesn’t have superstrength, and superhearing, and everything else, okay? But he’s been hurting and stumbling along with everyone else like the comic relief and no. He deserves a break. He deserves good things too.

Scott doesn’t _need_ him. Scott wants him, which will always be an ego boost, but Stiles needs some time to figure out how to be needed again.

.

He and Derek begin figuring out how to build up the Hale mansion properly again. Mostly Derek putters around excitedly, directing construction crews and Stile tries to sit still long enough to draw up blueprints.

And shit, suddenly, Stiles can _breathe_ again. He can stop the shaking in his hands again. He sketches a support structure for the third floor and he feels his lips tug up into a smile as he imagines an open roof plan so they can have barbecues.

 _It’s my house too, right?_ Stiles asks uncertainly as Derek passes by, his mouth full of nails, and Derek manages an impressive scowl while he’s got what looks like half of an Ikea box on his person.

He reappears an hour later, satisfied with the outer wall on the second floor, and cuffs Stiles gently.

 _I took a road trip with you_. He says. _I made you design this_.

To be fair, Stiles thinks, he’s not exactly sure what their relationship is, but they’re apparently at that part where they move in together.

.

Scott and the pack look way too excited about color swatches.

 _Green is superior_ Jackson is hollering, trying to keep the blue swatches away from Danny’s grip, but considering Danny’s height it’s not working.

 _Jesus it’s like trying to house a zoo_ Stiles mumbles while he tries to work out how to get a sunroof into Lydia’s second story room in a four story house.

.

Building the house is like finally surfacing after spending decades drowning. With each new wall, each new window, each door that Derek painstakingly paints names on, Stiles feels himself straightening up, walking with an extra spring in his step.

Derek finally kisses him when he discovers that, according to the blueprint, Stiles hasn’t built himself a room and instead has elected to make a slightly bigger room and label it _Derek and Stiles_.

 _This is it._ Derek pants into his mouth. _This is my something happy_.

 _Me?_ Stiles asks dizzily.

 _You, in my house, with a pack. With my pack_.

.

They go to college. Scott stays nearer to Beacon Hills and elects to take vet courses, and Jackson throws all his money into making sure they all come in from Davis, Berkeley, and Stanford every weekend to spend time at home. Most of them ignore offers for internships and working with professors because they already know what they want, and what they want is made of wood, stone, and bricks, stands four stories high, and has, through a neat magic trick Stiles learned, miniature suns in lieu of sunroofs in the lower rooms.

.

Derek is really, strangely content to just putter around and take care of the house.

 _It’s like watching some sort of bad housewife porno_ Erica says, fascinated, when they come home one week to the smell of muffins and Derek glaring at them until they take their shoes off before coming into the house.

Derek slaps business papers down onto the table and Stiles peers over, interested, when he reads what it says. Apparently, Derek has been busy hawking his wares, because people actually order his baked goods for their restaurants and stuff.

 _Not a housewife_ Derek glares as Stiles laughs and pulls him up to their – _their!_ – bedroom.

(Later, Lydia shouts them out about how inappropriate it is to use the term housewife, and a chastised pack all agree never to go there again.)

.

His hands don’t shake any more. He asks Derek about it, and Derek sinks down into the couch in the den and pulls Stiles into his lap.

 _You’re my mate_ he says simply, _and this house was tied to my pack. House fixed, pack fixed, ergo, mate fixed_.

Stiles thinks about how last weekend Scott asked him to come along and look at engagement rings for Allison, and Danny and Isaac had tried to sneak past Stiles while he was in the _same room_ because they though nobody knew they were sleeping together, and how Lydia had commissioned him and Erica to help move around the furniture and precise interior decorating in Jackson’s room for some intense, passive-aggressive showdown the couple were having. He thinks about how Derek made pancakes for everyone on Sunday, and even made them whole-wheat because he _cares_ about shit like that.

Yeah, he thinks, yeah. This could be good for him.

.

It comes down to this:

Stiles feels a little lost sometimes, on full moon nights, when the pack goes running. Lydia and Danny and Allison are out hunting down whatever the latest threat is, and Stiles is guarding the house and updating the wards he personally carves. It’s times like that when he thinks, faintly, that his hands might start shaking. He drops a coffee cup and cleans it up just to have something to do.

But then –

Danny will call him, frantic, and spouting some nonsense about how he’s so glad Stiles doesn’t put his werewolf whispering skills to evil uses because he’s running away from an omega that evidently, having caught his scent, wants Stiles, and Danny will possessively, albeit breathlessly, inform him that Stiles is _theirs_ and no one else gets to have him –

Lydia and Allison come back and are bored, so they model new outfits for him and Lydia quietly asks him to go over her econ paper, and Allison asks him to braid her hair –

Isaac comes back, exhausted and wolfed out, and he throws himself at Danny first, sure, but immediately after that he leaps into Stiles’ personal space and doesn’t leave until Stiles sighs, pats his back, and fondly drops a kiss to the mess of curls nuzzling under his chin, at which point Isaac bounds back to Danny, looking satisfied-

Boyd and Erica come in and Boyd pats him on the head absently and drops off a solid branch of oak at his feet, a potion ingredient that Stiles has been meaning to get for weeks, while Erica is tugging insistently at Stiles hands and animatedly explaining the things she saw and the badass moves she pulled-

Scott drops through the door next, and puts his grabby hands all over Stiles, tackling him to the floor and smirking when Stiles berates him for damaging the human –

And Derek, god, _Derek_ , who trudges in next, plucks Scott off of Stiles and hauls Stiles up to kiss him thoroughly. Derek doesn’t even talk to anyone else, just throws Stiles over his shoulder and heads up the stairs while Stiles gleefully shouts about what they’re going to do at a groaning pack –

And he’s so, _so_ , loved, that his hands never shake again.

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: now you can find me on [ tumblr!!! ](http://eversall.tumblr.com/) i know, you're SO excited *sarcasm*


End file.
